Many automotive vehicles are or soon will be required to provide and include anchors or bracket type members for securing aftermarket child safety seats to conventional and/or "factory provided" vehicle seats. These brackets are of a standard size, shape, and configuration; are mounted and/or are to be mounted/placed in standard predetermined locations upon the vehicle seats, and have a standard spacing arrangement; and are described for example and without limitation in Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 225. More particularly, these brackets are or will be required to be rigidly mounted to the vehicle seat and/or to the vehicle body and to be accessible at and/or to protrude from the "juncture" of the seat backrest and the seat bottom.
While these brackets offer vehicle owners, operators, and providers of child safety seats a standardized arrangement and mechanism for rigidly placing and/or operatively attaching a child seat within a vehicle, they presently provide substantially no other utility.
Additional secure storage space is typically desired within the passenger compartment of a vehicle, although it cannot frequently and/or usually be provided due to the spatial constraints imposed by the various devices and assemblies which are utilized within and which cooperatively form the vehicle. For this reason, attempts have been made to provide storage assemblies which can be removably secured within the passenger compartment of a vehicle.
Such prior attempts include, for example and without limitation, storage containers or assemblies which are adapted to be secured to the vehicle's seats by use of a conventional seat belt, or by use of a member which is frictionally and removably secured and/or placed within and between the engaged or abutting seat back and the seat cushion. These prior containers suffer from some drawbacks. This is, since these containers do not fixedly and rigidly attach to the vehicle seat and/or body, but rather rely on a relatively "loose" or unstable seat belt or frictional attachments, they often became dislodged, tip, or overturn while the vehicle is being driven. More particularly, during relatively high vehicle accelerations/decelerations or during cornering, these prior assemblies/devices often undesirably "travel within" the passenger compartment.
Thus, it is desirable to provide a storage assembly which overcomes at least some of the drawbacks of prior storage assemblies and which may be used in combination with child safety seat brackets, thereby maximizing the utility of the brackets while concomitantly providing additional and substantially secure storage space within a vehicle passenger compartment.